Every single RPG we make we have these huge discussions about what primary stats we should expose to players for putting points in. Routinely, these discussions happen multiple times during development and we change our minds all the time, and for DOS it's not been no different. Given how long some of you have been active here and the amount of ideas you gave us already, I think it's only sensible to have you also part of the debate so please let me know your thoughts on the following set of stats, taking intou account that this is a turn-based game. Let us know what you think each stat does, which stat you'd really like to add and which one you think really sucks.

Strength Dexterity IntelligenceSpeedPerceptionConstitution

I on purpose don't list what they're intended to mean in DOS, because I'm curious about your initial response to them. For the same reason I'll leave it up to your imaginations which primary stat affects what secondary stat.The secondary stats btw (i.e. the ones impacted by the above, but also by items/equipment & spells/skills) are

and then also a whole bunch of things you'd probably call perks or abilities (Lockpicking, trading, convincing, luck etc...)

I might have forgotten a few but it's the primary ones I'm really curious about. As further info, we're thinking of only giving ONE stat point per level, and capping the primary stats at 15 or 20, giving you X points to start with (e.g. 30)

Willpower is not in, we'd use charisma or INT for that.Evasion is not in, because it's part of "chance to be hit".Damage absorption comes from armor & items only atm.Crit hit is based on items only atm.Cost of movement is more actually something like "how far can you walk with one action point".

Strength: The amount of damage melee attacks to do, needed to equip heavier armor and weapons.

Dexterity: The chance of dodging an attack and the chance to hit with a non magic attack.

Intelligence: Power of magic attacks, more mana/energy/magic power points or less mana cost for using skills.

Speed: This is an uncommon one, particularly seeing as DOS is going to be turned based, I'd say that it increases either your moves per turn (giving you an extra attack) or order of turns (Say A and B are fighting C and D, A has speed of 20, B 5 C 15 and D 10. A goes first, then C then D and then B)

Perception: Ability to anticipate attacks, see hidden objects/enemies, find weaknesses and strengths in opponents (Will be able to see that Goblin is weak against fire but strong against arrows).

I think having 6 primary stats (like in Beyond Divinity) allows a lot of flexibility in character design, and adds a lot of replayability. Designing the game for 1 stat point per level and having a lowish level cap should encourage more strategic character development. Presumably there would be much fewer stat bonuses on equipment, to prevent that from becoming the dominant effect.

What's to say about the stat system? Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Constitution are classics, and who could object to Speed or Perception?

I don't really have any favourite stats or stat systems, as long as they are implemented well in the game. No stat sucks, per se, though I generally ignore Intelligence for a warrior or ranger, and don't play mages as a main character. D:OS will have 4 of the 6 skill groups being magic, but that may not mean much since we don't know the size of any of the groups yet. Who knows, maybe I'll finally play a mage character in a Divinity game...

Charisma - Intelligence / PerceptionPlenty of resistances - Constitution for poison, etc, Intelligence for magical damage, Perception if there are any psychic or illusion based attacks

I think it's only sensible to have you also part of the debate so please let me know your thoughts on the following set of stats, taking intou account that this is a turn-based game. Let us know what you think each stat does, which stat you'd really like to add and which one you think really sucks.

Hmmm... give my impressions on what I think each stat does? That's a good idea.

Strength - This increases melee damage and carrying capacity, and it lets you wear heavier armor and use heavier weapons. It allows you to perform special [Intimidate] actions in some conversations.

Dexterity - This increases ranged damage, as well as your chance to evade melee attacks and hit enemies with melee attacks.

Intelligence - This increases your mana reserve and magical damage. It may also open up special conversation options in dialogue.

Speed - This increases the amount of action points you have available and how quickly they recharge. It also affects your ability to evade attacks.

Perception - This increases your chance to evade ranged attacks and hit enemies with ranged attacks. It may also affect your chance to disarm traps and pick locks. It also can opens up special conversation options with people who are being less than truthful.

The secondary stats btw (i.e. the ones impacted by the above, but also by items/equipment & spells/skills) are:

Charisma - Charisma effects how persuasive some of your dice rolls are in conversations with your partner, but it is not the sole determiner in all cases. It also affects shop prices and opens up new conversation options. It is affected by Intelligence, Perception, and Strength, in that order, although one of the lesser two stats can be more effective in special cases.

Plenty of resistances - These decrease damage by a certain percentage. It is affected by Constitution, Intelligence (in the case of generic Magic resistance).

Initiative - This affects the turn order. It is affected by Speed.

Action points - This affects the number of action points a character have. Dexterity decreases the points needed for melee attacks, Intelligence decreases the points needed for magical attacks, Perception decreases the points needed for ranged attacks.

Cost of movement - This affects the number of action points movement requires. It is affected by Speed and Strength, especially in the case of heavier weapons and armors.

Mana/Energy - The amount of magic energy a spell or skill costs. It is affected by Intelligence.

Hitpoints - The amount of damage a character can sustain before being knocked out (one party member remains) or killed (both party members knocked out or survivor flees battle). It is affected by Constitution.

and then also a whole bunch of things you'd probably call perks or abilities (Lockpicking, trading, convincing, luck etc...)

Lockpicking would be mostly based on Perception, maybe Dexterity as well.

Trading would be based on Intelligence and Perception.

Convincing would be based half on Intelligence and half on Perception.

Luck is based on nothing.

Quote:

I might have forgotten a few but it's the primary ones I'm really curious about. As further info, we're thinking of only giving ONE stat point per level, and capping the primary stats at 15 or 20, giving you X points to start with (e.g. 30)

Let us know your thoughts and thx in advance for the feedback!

With 6 primary stats, 30 initial points to start out with, 1 point per level, and a max of say, 15 in a stat, that puts the effective level cap at 59 or 60, I think.

Will there be a respec-for-money option available? If you screw up and realize that you don't like how that build works, you may have lost a third of your possible points already with no respec.

I'm also worried about how free this will be. There are 6 stats, and 30 points, which could result in builds between 5 points in everything and 15 points into 2 skills and the rest at 0 or 1. That sounds like it could be harder to balance, especially if you do something dumb like pump all your points into skills that aren't that helpful in combat or are best for weapons that take a while for the tutorial dungeon to give you.

I don't really have any favourite stats or stat systems, as long as they are implemented well in the game. No stat sucks, per se, though I generally ignore Intelligence for a warrior or ranger, and don't play mages as a main character. D:OS will have 4 of the 6 skill groups being magic, but that may not mean much since we don't know the size of any of the groups yet. Who knows, maybe I'll finally play a mage character in a Divinity game...blocking - Dexterity / Speed or maybe Perception

That 4 out of 6 groups thing you was actually a miscommunication - we're still adding skills & spells and the final grouping isn't really decided yet. I doubt very much that it'll be just 6 groups, given the quantities we're working with now.

I assumed when that '4 of 6 skill groups were magic' thing was mentioned that the other two groups were something like combat and non-combat, which would cover everything else. It's good to know there are enough skills now that that wouldn't be a practical way to organize them, if that was every the intent.

I mentioned the possibly of playing a mage because turn based combat eliminates some of the reasons I usually don't play mages, not because I thought the game would be focused on magic.

I mostly think the same (on this topic) as Stabbey. Just some few additions/thoughts:

Strength: Could also be used for how far you can throw weapons; daggers, different kind of (exploding) flasks. Boosts natural armor, boosts defense/lowers AP lost against knockdowns/stuns?

Perception: Detecting invisible units and how far a character can see

Intelligence: Amount of spells one can know at the same time.

Ugh, this is difficult to balance out. You want every skill to be kinda important, (ofcourse a typical warrior would want to have different skills than a Mage). But still want to consider other stats than his primary.So a warrior is on the frontline, and thus wants lots of strength and constitution. But would you want a warrior to have dexterity/intelligence or are they mostly useless for him.If you, for example, split of the critical hit rating into dexterity. A warrior would have a reason to take points into dex from time to time. But then you have the danger of rangers being ranged critical hit masters. So what Stabbey suggests, solves that a warrior needs to split between strength and dex. But could make strength a too powerful stats for a warrior, intelligence too important for a mage,...

But ofcourse, you have perception here too so that you can split ofAnd always a possibility to have the more better stats (life, damage, hit/crit rating, ...) derive from more then one stat. Life is mostly the constitution stat, but also strength can buff it a small bit. This making the warrior approach having more survivability as they require. And constitution can also increase the number of AP slightly where speed increases this more.

I dont know how you are planning to do the talking with NPC's. If there open up choices depending on stats or not. From Larians history I guess it wont affect it as much as Arcanum for example. But if you do, it could be the same problem with mages having high intelligence, and thus them always having the extra conversation options. While the warrior/ranger can get forced to play the dumber brute. So I would suggest having intimidate being more prominent on the same level as intelligence opens up persuasive options, and perception opening up bluffs/lies as well as spotting them. Thus having the different types of characters each their own approach to conversations.

Sorry for the poor wording/construction of this post. But that happens when you are thinking,writing and still forming an opinion of this topic at the same time.

Do you think about social stats? For example, the oratory, which is divided into: Lies, Threats, Flattery, Joke, Persuasion. You can apply these five skills in different situations. For example, some characters like flattery, others hate it. So it will be possible to improve / worsen the ratio of any NPC.You can also think about such a thing as courage, law-abiding, kindness.So depending on how brave or cowardly our character, law or a bandit, good or evil, it will be possible to develop a unique character that will influence the answers in the dialogue.With these characteristics and skills you may receive an additional non-linearity. And that's great! And people will want to go to your RPG many times. For example, now I have given myself an evil, cowardly thug who lied and flattered, and then all the devotees. The next time I made a good , brave defender of order. And then I wanted to do good, cowardly defender order, which lies to the bandits and plunge knife in their back.

From the names of the 6 stats, only Intelligence sounds like it should affect magic.

Intelligence looks like a really, REALLY good stat to put a lot of points into because it carries the entire load of magic. I think maybe you might want to consider adding WILLPOWER back in as a seventh stat so that ALL of Melee, Ranged, and Magic is based on two stats, instead of leaving Magic as just based all on one stat:

Intelligence: Increases mana, adds new conversation options. Increases Chance for a critical hit when using magic.Willpower: Increases Magic Damage and magic resistance - it lowers the duration of debuffs. Increases the critical damage of magic attacks when a critical hit occurs.Constitution: Also decreases the magnitude of debuffs.

Right now, Constitution seems like the weakest stat. Just on appearance alone, it only suggests that it gives passive bonuses like extra health, damage resistance and other things. Just adding a second Magic stat and splitting the worth of Intelligence won't fix Constitution.

I don't have an ideal fix for that, but perhaps each level you naturally gain health and mana like Divinity 2. If you remove the Constitution stat, and increase the value of the health you get per level, you could then add an extra bonus to Strength - it increases your health slightly, and Speed increases your health regeneration rate (per turn and in non-combat free roamaing). The reasoning is that those who specialize in Strength will be more likely to spend more time closer to enemies than ranged and magic users. It's not a perfect solution by any means, though. It's probably actually a bad idea, and makes Strength a bit too useful.

Maybe Constitution could affect the number of action points in some way, like someone suggested?

* * *

When it comes to leveling up and starting stat pool, I would prefer getting TWO points per level-up and starting with 15 points instead of getting ONE point per level-up and starting with 30. You only build your character once, but you should level up many times, so this would make leveling up feel more rewarding.

I'd also put a cap on how many points you can put into one stat at character creation, so you don't end up with a situation like:

Hi,I don't want to "repeat" the whole list and to be honest I'm still making a study of the stats and how they fall on place like the pieces of a braintaking puzzle ;-) ...

So I wish to give some more BASIC thoughts about the Primary & Secundary Statistics :1) make the system intuitive enough to understand & learn the game mechanism whilst playing D:OS the very first time and most players can say: "Hey, this is a nice game, intuitive to learn handle it & it becomes (fast & very) addictive too

2a) So the FIRST impression is a "simple" stat-system, but nope, it isn't if the player looks more thoroughly and deeper into the system ! Then the player can discover the many "secrets/hidden" LINKS between Primary & SEcundary stats and how they affect eachother depending on what the player with his/her hero(in) is doing: talking, trading, fighting, exploring the world, etc etc ... ! 2b) In other words the stat-system is an Advanced system behind the "scene" ! 2c) Two pro's this have : * the more "casual player" is happy it's a game intuitive to learn & understand (and I think most of the gamer love this fact - no one is waiting for a too complicated system to learn handle ... gaming is entertainment and not throwing the game out of the window because ... )** the more "hardcore" gamer and the one who love it to play a game thoroughly and deep: he/she can discover more by studying the system & many nice things he/she can use for the more or better tactical/strategical moves maybe needed on the higher settings of the "difficulty"

3) I'm not 100% sure if I understand it correctly, so I ask: ".. giving you X points to start with (e.g. 30)" Will this mean such a system like at the start of Flames of Vengeance IF you start a New Game ? If so, good idea and 1 statpoint per level up is fine IF each Primary Stat affects a differences of Secundary Stats/Abilities - Perks / Skills ... so it become more important to "think" about investing a statpoint !

4) I like it to be able to invest in all 6 Primary stats !

5)It's already mentioned the "ballancing" of the whole system: I believe the stats Perception, Speed and Constitution EVERY kind of build needed them and can have good use of them for trading, persuasion, open new dialogue options (if this would be implemented in the game), .... While Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence are more "build-based" (warrior, ranger, mage).But depending on your build Speed, Perception & Condition is less or more important ! Also a word about "Plenty of resistances" : let MANY Primary/Secundary stats affect some kind of resistance ! (later I come up with examples, suggestions & more !)

6) Please make it also fun to play with a more MIXED BUILD too, a little bit of this, a little bit of that :hehehe: ... or just insert a possibility to make many kind of builds ! And soem of you know I love the Priest build in Divnity II DKS, knowing this wasn't a primary build you can start with in Ego Draconis, but with enough imagination ALL builds lay open before you !!! Okay, so far I'm done with this, later more ... .

To be honest: I must admit that my mind is full of Original ideas ...ehmm... sorry, 'Original Sin', YES, that's the "Gem" .... ... I want to get my hands on it & have fun !! But I can wait in full contempletion

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On 7th of february 2015 : I start a new adventure in the Divinity world of Original Sin, it's a Fantastic Freaking Fabulous Funny ... it's my All Time Favorite One !

Perception:Main role: uhm accuracy?Secondary role: something on the field? Enemy discovery? View of field?Affects:Charisma (see a lot os small details about chaarcter and env that helps in dialogues)InitiativeChance to hit (melee/ranged)Evade (possibly)

This is just a quick one, I'll revise it later, but as you can see I like to tie them up for better balancing for each class. Each main ATTR affects wide range of second attr, some greater (prolific, like DEX is obviously for Evade), some less (STR gives critical hit boost to, but DEX gives more, obviously, it helps to lay down all this strength), etc.

My thought exactly, for each specified class - main ATTR increases critical. But... problem is that if you add some artificial non-battle requirement that will force player to increase ATTR not important for his class, like, STR for ranger in order to carry more gold/items, then it does not sounds so great anymore. I dunno this is the problematic spot when you need to be careful.

Good stuff here. We thought about more social stats, but they're a productional suicide They only make sense if the game does enough with them, and that is very work and time consuming. We're already making the most text intensive games, driving our writers and loca companies up the wall we can only wish we'd have the time to actually have those and use them in dialogs one day, but we have to balance the budget fairly...

Intuitive: indeed, and simple yet deep for those who wanna know. Quite the challenge as well, also balancing-wise. It's one thing to have lots of stats, even if they're "hidden" from the casual player, it's another to keep them meaningful.

INT is indeed powerful... WP makes sense... But 7 stats sounds scary. We started with 4

Well, thinking on this again, if the game has a big a focus on magic combos as the gameplay demos suggest, it might not be a bad thing to make magic extra powerful. If melee/ranged damage requires you to split your attribute points, but not so much your skill points, maybe it's a kind of balance if magic is the opposite - you need to split your skill points, but not your attribute points.

Seven attribute points does sound a bit scary, but if it's what the game needs, it's what the game needs. You could bump that initial build of 30 free points up to +35 (or the 15 free up to +18), or if seven is just too scary, maybe find a way to remove one of the other 6 (Constitution) and spread its uses to other attributes.

I also hope that this game will let +attribute bonuses from items exceed the cap on the attribute points, but another idea is that with the low maximum cap on attribute points, players might stock up on gear which boosts different attributes than their primaries.

Div had 4 stats, but that was a hack and slasher. We were testing out the 4 stat system in the turn based environment, and it seemed limited in creating the typical turn based roles. Lots of char builds were too similar, not specific enough. Stats doing too much and too much of the same, or impacting 2 opposites which isn't good...

I had this long post about reducing the stats. Actually, my first complaint in that unwritten post was: with one stat point per level and with the number of choices, player builds might be forced to specialize. I scrapped it because I felt that extra effort was made to increase the number of stats and there had to be a reason for it.

Anyway, regardless of all the ideas here - it id all depends on the time and amount of work you can put into. I'm pretty sure we can think out of something quite complex that will suit DOS but the question is that will you have enough time to implement and balance/polish it.

Good stuff here. We thought about more social stats, but they're a productional suicide They only make sense if the game does enough with them, and that is very work and time consuming. We're already making the most text intensive games, driving our writers and loca companies up the wall we can only wish we'd have the time to actually have those and use them in dialogs one day, but we have to balance the budget fairly...

I know, its probably why Troika Games had so much problems releasing on time and running out of money .

I think I remember (I hope I'm not confusing it with some other developer studio and game) very old and very long blog (or was it forum?) of some developer who worked on Arcanum, he mentioned that balancing stats and magic/technology system was literally one of the hardest thing ever. After lots of time spent they still haven't gotten close to what they had in mind, ideally.